Property owners get chance to gripe on Grievance Day

Grievance Day, the annual opportunity for property owners to contest their assessments, arrives May 28 for most municipalities in New York.

The state Department of Taxation and Finance offer...

» Read more

X

Pregrievance process

Grievance Day, the annual opportunity for property owners to contest their assessments, arrives May 28 for most municipalities in New York.

The state Department of Taxation and Finance offers a pregrievance process to help property owners determine if their assessments are fair:

Check the assessment roll available at village, town or city hall to determine your property's assessment.

If the municipality assesses at 100 percent of market value, the assessment and the assessor's estimate of market value should be the same. If assessments fall below 100 percent of market value, the assessor's office will typically provide the full value that the assessment reflects.

Next, develop an estimate of your property's market value. Homeowners can look at the assessments of comparable residential properties. Commercial owners may want to retain an appraiser.

A fair assessment estimate generally reflects what buyers and sellers would consider to be a fair sale price.

If the assessment is too high, an informal discussion with the assessor can provide information useful to both parties. A property owner whose grievance isn't satisfactorily resolved can pursue a small claims assessment review through the court system.

For more information, go to tax.ny.gov/pit/property.

James Walsh

» Social News

Everybody deserves a little time to complain.

Maybe that's why there's a Grievance Day. It's the official day when New York property owners can contest assessments they feel defy reality. It arrives May 28 this year for most local governments. Before fueling a righteous fervor, check the date observed by the assessor's office in your town.

Remember, though, that Grievance Day isn't the time to complain about taxes. Save that for the other 364 days of the year.

"Successful grievances focus on the market value of the property," he said in an email, "as opposed to focusing on the tax amount or financial hardships."

Dennis Ketcham, assessor for the towns of Montgomery and Mount Hope, has found that "in many cases, once we have explained how the assessing and municipal budgeting process works, they decide they are not, in fact, overassessed, but overtaxed."

Ketcham emphasized that most property owners can plead their case without hired help.

"The system was designed for the homeowner to provide a no-cost means of grieving their assessment," said Ketcham, an executive board member of the New York State Assessors Association.

A property assessment, Bernaski said, "represents what a willing buyer would buy it for, and what a willing seller would sell it for."

She and others in the assessment business have found more homeowners contesting their assessments since the Wall Street mortgage debacle. Their property values fell, and their assessments should reflect that.

That said, it appears Middletown may have a quiet Grievance Day this year. Only 17 grievances had been filed by midweek out of 8,619 properties in the city.

Wiley's office in New Windsor has received 120 grievances. That's a bit more than 1 percent of the properties in the town.

"I would also like to point out," Wiley said, "that taxpayers that feel they are overassessed should first discuss it with their assessor, prior to filing a grievance."

Sometimes a deal can be reached without going through the grievance process.